


Lord Knows, It Would Be The First Time

by Duck_Life



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Awkward Romance, Fluffy Ending, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Presumed Dead, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 06:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5656711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn's not very much with the words. Poe is stupid and sacrificial.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lord Knows, It Would Be The First Time

“Poe, you can’t, you’ll die,” Rey says, with all the strictness the General might have used. “It’s suicide.”

The pilot bobs his head, scratches the back of his neck like he’s trying to buy time before having to give her an answer. “Yeah,” he says, the dim light from the First Order corridor throwing the lines of his face into shadow. “I kind of worked that out.”

Rey grips her lightsaber tighter like she’s going to physically fight him. To be perfectly honest, Poe wouldn’t put it past her. “I won’t let you do it.”

“Come on,” he says, his thick eyebrows drawing together. Finn’s backed against the wall, sort of stunned. Since Poe announced his plan, he hasn’t said a word. “You know it’s our best shot at winning this.”

“You don’t have to throw away your life,” she says, still just as commanding as the tears start to gather in the creases of her eyes.

“Yeah, I know,” Poe admits, sounding older than he is, “but _someone_ has to. And I’m gonna make sure that that someone’s me.” He smiles. He always did have a nice smile. “I guess that’s my thing. You’re the Jedi, Finn’s got the big heart. I just want all the glory.”

“No,” Rey says bluntly. “You can get off the ship. You can blow it up. You can do _both_.”

“Well, sure,” Poe shrugs. “Of course I’ll get off the ship. Once it blows up, there won’t _be_ a ship, so naturally, I’ll be _off_ the sh-”

She punches him. He’s only surprised it didn’t happen sooner. “Poe Dameron, I’ll drag you back to Resistance if I have to.”

“No you won’t,” he says, sad and quiet and sacrificial. “Because you know I’m right, Rey.”

Damn him, but she does. With their greatest weapon eliminated, the First Order won’t stand a chance against the Resistance. She can taste it, can scrape it with her teeth now— victory. It’s right there.

She just has to lose one of her best friends in the process.

Finn still hasn’t spoken.

“I’m beginning to really not like you,” Rey says to Poe, messily wiping tears from her cheek. He pulls her into a tight hug, tucking her head right under his chin. Meeting Finn’s eyes, Poe feels rooted to the spot.

He really, really doesn’t want to go.

He really, really knows that he has to. He just has to.

“Rey,” Poe says, still looking over her shoulder at Finn as they break apart, “you have to know.” He’s looking at her now. “I’m not leaving you. If I could stick around I would, okay? You go on and you tell the best war stories you can think of about me. Embellish away. And know that I’m right there in them, okay? I’ll be right there. _I am not leaving you_.”

Rey nods. “Okay.”

“You got a good head on your shoulders, kid,” he says, tapping the center of her forehead. “Don’t lose it.” He kisses her in the spot he tapped. “And take care of that droid for me, will ya?”

“Yes,” she promises, making no attempt to stem the tears now. She’s still holding her lightsaber out like she can fight the inevitable.

“Finn,” Poe says, and again feels that sense of his feet turning to lead. How can he do this? How can he walk away? “Thank you,” Poe says, pulling him into a hug. “For everything.”

There’s so much he wants to say. _You’re a good man, Finn_ and _It was nice to know you_ and _Keep that jacket, alright_?

But of course he’s already said all of that.

Finn can’t say a thing.

Poe pats him on the shoulder, adjusts the collar of the jacket that used to be his, and starts to walk away. “Boy,” he calls back, “I’m gonna look really stupid if this doesn’t work.”

And it’s then, as he’s nearing the end of the long hallway, that Finn finds his voice.

“Wait!” he calls, reaching an arm out like he can reel the other man back to him. “Poe! Poe Dameron, I…” And just as suddenly as it returned, his voice catches again.

But Poe, Poe just looks back at him with the lights reflected in his eyes, just looks back and says, “I know.”

Poe Dameron dies thirty-two years after the Battle of Endor.

No body is ever recovered, but they erect a gravestone beside his mother’s on Yavin 4. The General gives a speech at the ceremony. Jessika Pava carries his helmet over to the stone and sets it down as carefully as she possibly can. Finn and Rey stand beside each other silently the whole time.

They win the war.

Finn never gets rid of the damn jacket but he can’t bring himself to wear it anymore. It hangs in his closet. Occasionally he brushes a finger over it, the feel of the soft leather, remembering warm hands and a big smile and mussed hair. He won’t let himself forget a second.

Rey moves in with Finn, the two of them sharing a bunk bed and talking late into the night. Some nights they lay awake together and say nothing at all.

Life goes on, it just runs into roadblocks sometimes. Like when people ask for Finn’s last name and he has to say that he doesn’t have one, no one ever gave him one. Like when a rookie announces that he aspires to be the best pilot in the galaxy and Jessika tells him in absolute seriousness that he’s going to have to work a hell of a lot harder.

Like when Finn takes a wrong step and feels the old scars in his back twinge, remembers weeks of physical therapy following the battle with Kylo Ren, remembers Poe walking him up and down the halls, remembers Poe smiling at him from the end of a hallway and saying, “Just walk to me, just walk to me, buddy,” remembers Poe standing at the end of the hallway and then turning and then walking away, “ _I know_.”

And then one day, months after the funeral, a scrappy piece of scrap metal lands on the tarmac at the D’Qar base, looking seconds from completely falling apart.

A man jumps out of the cockpit, so covered in dirt and grime that it takes the pilots standing around a moment to recognize him.

And then they do recognize him.

Poe Dameron tells his story so often that half the people on the base know it by heart, and the other half know a wildly exaggerated and embellished version.

In the fun version, Poe gets swallowed by an Exogorth and vomited up on some distant planet, where he falls in with a group of pirates and travels the galaxy looting and pillaging to make his way before finally procuring a ship of his own in a sudden-death dance-off and finding his way home.

In the real version, Poe gets luckier than anyone should be and thinks quicker than he ever thought he could. Luke Skywalker cuffs him on the shoulder and calls him “too kind to die.” The General full-out hugs him like he’s her own son.

There’s a party, later known as the final resting place of all the alcohol on D’Qar. Jessika Pava spends almost the whole night with one hand holding a drink and the other holding Poe.

BB-8 follows him around so closely that they roll over several toes without noticing or apologizing.

Rey can’t believe it. Really, actually can’t believe it, and Jess and Poe and the General keep having to confirm it for her. “You died,” she says over and over, “you died, you sacrificed yourself and you died.”

“Well, I tried,” Poe laughs, warm and happy and safe. “I guess I can’t do anything right.”

Rey hugs him fast and tight, kisses him on the cheek, and then gets carted away by Jess to get another drink.

And then there’s Finn.

When Poe initially showed up, no force in the galaxy could keep Finn from launching himself at him and hanging on for dear life.

Following this, however, Finn’s mostly kept to himself all day, while Poe bounces between various friends and mentors and loved ones.

This is the first time they’ve been alone all day.

“Good to see you,” Poe smiles, pulling Finn into a hug before Finn can say anything. When they break apart, Finn looks concerned. “I’m really okay. I swear.”

“I know.”

“Okay.”

Poe can’t remember it ever being this awkward between the two of them. He wonders if Finn’s trying to find the right way to tell him that they sold all his stuff.

“When I told you… when I… what I was going to tell you,” Finn says, stumbling over his words. Poe watches him. “When you said you _knew_ what I was going to tell you.”

“Oh,” Poe says, and dammit, last words are so much easier when you really do die right after them. “Right.”

“I just… I don’t know that you actually were… that what you thought I was going to say…” Finn never misses being a Stormtrooper, but at times like this he misses the mask. It’s almost enough to make him want to bury his face in his hands. “Look—”

“What were you going to tell me?” Poe says, his voice low and rough but still gentle somehow as he gravitates closer. Finn can’t help but be drawn in.

“Poe Dameron,” he says, their faces a breath apart. “I was going to say… ‘Poe Dameron, I… think this is a really _stupid_ idea.’”

“Ah,” Poe says, biting his lip. Finn tries not to look. “Is that right?”

“Stupid and _reckless_.”

“Of course.”

They’re so close now that Finn can feel the heat radiating off of Poe. The man’s like a hot cup of coffee, a sweaty summer night; he’s like home. “And _dangerous_.”

“It really was,” Poe agrees, and leans in to let their lips brush together. It’s soft at first, and Finn responds with hands in Poe’s hair and eyes shut and moving in, mouths melting together like they were always meant to. Poe pulls him closer by the waist and they just sink into it.

It stops. Finn actually, bless him, makes a low whining noise. Poe’s grinning. “I just,” he says, breathless. “You know that I also—”

“I know,” Finn says, and kisses him again.

If Finn’s ears weren’t buzzing quite so loud, he might hear Rey and Jess wolf-whistling and clapping.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [only dying makes us grow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11058615) by [unintentionalgenius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unintentionalgenius/pseuds/unintentionalgenius)




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